Late last summer, MarketingSherpa published a series of articles on how marketers should consider revamping their email designs to comply with preview pane use and image blocking (see link below).

The problem was that while we knew roughly 69% of at-work email users usually view emails in their preview panes, no one had any hard data on consumers.

So, consumer marketers weren't sure if they should redesign for preview and image blocking or keep doing business as usual. This January, we partnered with Survey Sampling International to solve this problem. Here are the fascinating results of our new research:

(Note: As always, please do not break our copyright by copying these charts. You may, however, hotlink to this article.)

Note: The B-to-B data is from an EmailLabs study as of October 2005. We suspect that number is stable or even higher because nearly 80% of at-work users in the US rely on Outlook, which offers preview panes.

The B-to-C data is from our own new study, conducted in late January. These are people who use email clients such as Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL, EarthLink, Outlook Express and Gmail.

Older "classic" versions of these email clients usually didn't have preview panes, which is why it was not a big issue in consumer email marketing up to this point.

However, in our study, we discovered a full 38% of online consumers now use preview pane 'capable' email clients. That's a large swathe of the US population, and the number is growing steadily as companies such as Yahoo heavily promote upgrades.

Consumers who switch to these services strongly prefer to use preview panes. In fact, 64% of people who are offered preview panes start using them as their default.

What does this mean for marketers? More than one out of four consumers see just a corner of the beautiful email creative you sent them. They may not open up to look at the entire image at all. (No, your open measurements will *not* tell you who views in preview and who opens all the way.)

So, your offers and newsletters are being judged on the basis of a corner. Can you imagine if people judged your print ads by just a corner of the creative? Or your TV ads by just a few frames? That's what's increasingly happening with email.

Chart#2. The Demographics of Preview Pane Use Among Consumers

The data above focuses on the 38% of the online consumer population who are currently using advanced or new versions of email clients with preview pane capabilities.

We sliced responses into three roughly generational groups to show you which consumers are more likely to be using preview panes. As you might have guessed, the younger you are, the more likely you are to use advanced email bells and whistles. However, we were a bit surprised to see how high preview pane use is in the oldest generation. Grandma, we didnít know you were so sophisticated!

This amply illustrates that no consumer marketer is safe from the preview pane problem. All generations are using them.

One more demographic note: Although we're using the term "consumers" here, marketers should be aware that this demographic includes a large number of small businesspeople who often rely on free or ISP email services.

Chart #3. Specific Types of Preview Panes Used: By Demographic

To cope with the preview pane challenge, first, your email designer or template team need to understand what size and shape panes are. What can consumers see and what can't they see?

Once you know what corner of your email creative they are looking at, you can move calls to action, hotlinks and highest-impact creative to that corner to increase response.

As you can see from the chart above, sadly, that space is not always large. Consumers tend to prefer smaller preview panes -- they are sure they can judge whether your email is worth looking at or responding to by just glancing at a small piece of it.

Happily, most prefer the horizontal version to the vertical. The horizontal is a bit easier to design for.

Not sure what each version looks like? Scroll down to our hotlinks section below, where we've posted a collection of screenshots of each version and size. By the way, thanks to MSN for the newsletter sample used there. You guys invented preview panes so we figured it's only fair to view your mail in them.

You may be surprised to hear that this chart is actually fairly good news. Recent industry expert estimates of image blocking have been in the 60%-70% range. Turns out the experts were wrong. Fewer than 50% of consumers routinely block all images.

However, bear in mind this chart is not just about preview pane or advanced email client users. This chart is about everyone we surveyed, so it applies to all consumers.

Have you viewed your own email creative with images blocked recently? Judging from our in-boxes, we know of many, many marketers who are in for a nasty surprise when they finally take a look.

Now, we're not suggesting that you stop using images in consumer emails. MarketingSherpa studies show that images, when used appropriately, can significantly improve responses from consumers who see them.

However, from now on, when your creative team shows you email to approve, we suggest you refuse to OK anything unless you get three versions to approve at the same time:

1. Preview pane version - at least small horizontal.

2. Images blocked version.

3. Regular full-screen glory version.

Research Methodology and Quick Notes:

Survey Sampling International fielded this survey on MarketingSherpa's behalf Jan. 19-25, 2007. 1,323 online consumers ages 18 or older responded. They were representative of the US online population as a whole.

Key: We didn't just ask questions and rely on consumers to check the right box. Instead, we gave respondents plenty of screenshots so they could see what we were asking about. For example, when we asked Hotmail users which version of Hotmail they used, we showed them pictures of different versions to pick from.

Why is this important? Well, we doubt that some people would know which particular email client version they're on or what size preview pane they use. So, why risk getting a wrong answer?

Comments about this Article

Feb 16, 2007 -
John K. of
Open World Ltd. says:
Great and interesting data as always. I am curious about the author's final recommendation to have 3 versions of all emails created. Are you saying email marketers should send out three separate versions? If so, how would they know who gets which version? The only way I can think of doing this is via end-user preferences...

Feb 16, 2007 -
Robin Sherman of
Editorial & Design Services says:
You don't tell us much at all about your methodology? Where did you get the names of the online people you surveyed? What is the total population of users? How did you derive your sample? What percentage responded? What was margin of error? Degree of confidence? Were there accidental biases in your questions? How many people do you think lie? Did you use regression analysis?

Feb 17, 2007 -
Otis Maxwell of
freelance copywriter says:
There's another way to read these results. In Outlook, preview panes are the default preference, so according to this survey almost 3 of 4 users have actively turned this preference off. That's pretty remarkable in the context of user behavior in general, which favors leaving the defaults alone.
Similarly, images are blocked by default. So it looks like 59% of users accepted those preferences, but over 40% changed them and said yes, I'd like to see the images.
And finally--this is not a statistic, just a clarification--people who don't use the preview pane don't immediately "look at the whole email". Rather, they see just a line listing with the subject line and then make a decision to open or delete.
As a guy who works with online creative, I'm dealing with the technical challenges of email every day. In designing a message it's essential to understand a/what defaults Microsoft has set, since those limitations will be left alone by most viewers (the results for the preview pane in this study being a notable exception) and b/what users do when they decide to tinker with those defaults.

Feb 19, 2007 -
Darren of
Logitech Ltd says:
John,
Use multi-mime email types when sending out comms. Basically, it checks to see if the email client can use HTML. If so, it displays your HTML version, if not, it shows the plain text version. Most decent mass mailing providers allow you to create both types alongside each other.

Feb 19, 2007 -
Tad Clarke of
MarketingSherpa says:
John, sorry for the confusion. The three versions described here are really three ways that a single email creative might be displayed. So, you're OKing the same creative, but in three different ways that end recipients might see it. If it doesn't look good in all three ways, then you might need to consider reformatting.

Feb 19, 2007 -
Tad Clarke of
MarketingSherpa says:
Robin, as noted, we worked in partnership with an online surveying firm. MarketingSherpa put together the survey itself and then analyzed results. The firm was responsible for fielding the survey to its panel. The number of respondents we cite is the total number of consumers who took the entire survey. Given the number of respondents, and the fact that we showed them screenshots for more accurate answers, we have a 95% degree of confidence in results with an interval of +/- 3 degree. For more specifics about the panel, recruitment, etc., feel free to contact our partner directly. Their URL is above.

Feb 23, 2007 -
David Culbertson of
LightBulb Interactive says:
This type of data confirms my decision to use "plain" html for my monthly newsletter and what I recommend to my clients. (Nick Usborne also recommended plain html in a webinar I attended yesterday). Using a multi-part MIME email does _not_ solve the image blocking problem. For example, Gmail will display the html email but blocks the images by default. This makes for ugly emails!

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